


Perl Beyond Price

by stellar_dust



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-04
Updated: 2009-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellar_dust/pseuds/stellar_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humans are brilliant, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perl Beyond Price

**Author's Note:**

> I had website angst. Donna understood.

"Look at this!" enthused the Doctor, pointing energetically at something he'd been staring at on the screen. "You humans, you're brilliant!"

"Just some old website code." Donna peered over his shoulder disinterestedly. Then she did a double take, nearly spilling her tea. "What site're you looking at, then?"

"Eh, s'just the Ministry of Defense," the Doctor said, shoving his specs on his nose. "Never mind that. But look! You've got all these letters, and words, and little squiggles, and when you put it together right, you can make it show whatever you want, however you want! Well, two dimensions. So far. But it's so _elegant_. You're brilliant!"

He beamed at her.

"Yeah." Donna shrugged, blowing delicately across the top of her tea as she she settled onto the stair. "HTML's great. Then they had to go balls it up with their style sheets and their java and their perl and whatever, and how's a girl meant to keep up?"

The Doctor gaped.

"What?" She wiggled her fingers at him. "Supertemp. Web page updates, my speciality."

Recovering quickly, the Doctor raised his eyebrows and rotated the screen to face Donna. "But that's exactly what I mean. Look, all these files - one, two, three, D - I mean four - five, six - you look at them together in _exactly_ the right way, and they make - that!"

He tapped a corner of the screen at Donna expectantly, like a puppy anticipating a nice scratch behind the ears.

Oh, hell, that was _not_ bloody Internet Explorer.

Donna pursed her lips. "Are you telling me," she began quite deliberately, "that in all the millennia of the vast and amazing universe, _no one_ has invented a better web scripting language than _PHP_?"

"What did I say." The Doctor grinned widely and waggled his head at her. "You're brilliant!"

"I have a headache," said Donna, and downed the rest of her tea in a single gulp.


End file.
